Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Crab Eyes

I just read that deep-sea crabs have acute vision. In order to collect these crabs, deep-sea divers lure them into traps by using dimmed red lights. Like most deep-sea animals, they are extremely sensitive to a ship's or submarine's search lights, for bright flashing lights may blind them momentarily.

In addition, their vision is extraordinary since they can see ultraviolet light. Who'd have thought!

When I read all this, I mulled over us, the human animals on the surface of planet earth. If we look at the sun directly or to an eclipse, we are blinded like crabs.

Like them, are we, also, endowed with sights other species lack? I hope so. It would be nice to be special, not to boast or gloat over other animals, but be really special.

Then, maybe we are. To start with, the great majority of us loves food, a great variety of it, and sometimes in large amounts. My purchases from Publix today provide the proof.

Better yet, one thing over other species is our parenting skills. Not that we are all so skilled, but we stay parents through life no matter how old or rotten our children get.

Also, most of us are intelligent enough, playful, curious, artistic, graceful (though not me!), big-hearted, and with a sense of humor.

I wonder if crabs laugh...if they do, how do they?

Maybe crabs own more legs than us, but usually, we are not crabby, PMS excluded.

We, too, may be blinded looking at the sun, but do the crabs know how to share, how to love, how to be accustomed to certain things? Can they be touchy, preoccupied, or alternately euphoric and desperate?

Do they get traumatized when lifted from their home into a boat? The answer to this one remains open, I think.